The principle of the rotating disc or "bladeless-wheel" pump or turbine is old and well-known with credit for its origin being generally attributed to Nikola Tesla. The U.S. Pat. No. to Tesla 1,061,142, sets forth the fundamentals of such a device which may be utilized either as a pump, to convert mechanical energy into fluid flow and thus pressure, or as a turbine, to convert fluid flow into mechanical energy. The efficiency of turbine engines utilizing this concept is, of course, well-accepted in the art.
Throughout the years many improvements have been made with respect to fluid propulsion apparatus as seen, for example, in the many patents and literature referred to in the Specification of my prior application, all the improvements being an attempt to approach the theoretical efficiency of a fluid propulsion apparatus of this type, i.e., there have been many attempts to achieve the theoretically possible maximum conversion of energy from one form to the other. With respect to pumps, the effort has been directed to achieving the desired pressure of the output fluid stream and in turbines the attempt has been to provide the maximum torque per revolution of the rotating discs.
None of the various improvements have made a significant inroad on the actual efficiency over the original Tesla model. In other words the prior art devices have not been able to achieve or even realistically approach the theoretical efficiency of a fluid propulsion apparatus.
Thus the present invention overcomes the aforementioned disadvantage by providing an improved fluid propulsion apparatus which more nearly approaches the theoretically possible efficiency of this type of device.